Mesa Trail ch 36
Draft 2

Hannah knew better, and knew she knew better, which made it all worse.  She knew these trails north and south as though they had become her own backyard.  So close, in fact, she looked each day for little signs of change in the landscape, watched for where the swarms of bumblebees skipped across the pedals of Indian Paint for nectar, tufts in the sedgegrass along the meadows where mule deer laid down to bed for the night, and certainly the rise and fall of the waterline on her very own creek.  But not west toward the Great Divide, not really, where those Flatirons rose up from their stems, and up above that, Green Mountain, Realization Point, and not Flagstaff where, from its backside, on Ute Trail, she had heard anyway from her mother, you can see the great spine of one of the great mountain rift.  One long extended rock from the coast up in Alaska down to the very southern tip of South America.  It was like a great wall, but natural, not put there; and even if she had never been up there, she had imagined walking the length of it some day, just get up and go.

Maybe she would start her small fund so she could some day get all the proper supplies together, and put in the research. All dreams, all mountain dreams.  For now, though, the dreams had turned from something that was supposed to be light, bright, and fresh, full of the good kinds of ghosts, to this heavy rain, gray air and the hush that comes over a forest under seige.  She should have gotten ahold of her mother before she headed upwards for Josh.  He's with Inuna, so of course they know where they are, but anything can happen, nobody could be perfect up here along these rocks.  She'd gotten off trail and had decided to shoot straight up the sides of patches of forest that looked at least passable. Sooner or later the criss cross of some trail would show up and she could follow that, but for now straight up.  For anybody who has ever tried the straight up approach to a mountain face, knows it looks easier than it is.  Hannah's legs felt like dead timber.  Nothing familiar here.  She had a poncho, that was a good move, at least. The rain came down so hard now on the top of the hood that she could hardly hear herself think.  She went on like this for half an hour, stumbling over broken rocks, leaning under tangles and thickets.  She reached a small clearing that opened to yet another false horizon and stood for a minute to catch her breath.  What she didn't know, couldn't have, is that up over the next boulder ridge, split apart, offering a wide view, was a bear and a man walking three hundred feet from one another, gradually up the side of Flagstaff mountain, to Ute itself, where the ancient golden cave, the legendary mother lode, sat in near silence as it housed two children, safe, but one afraid, one prepared to hold out for as long as the storm roared over the spiney peaks of front range.